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Re: [engelang] intensions & extensions (Xorban)



Well, that is interpretation again, and we aren't to go into that.  The question -- insofar as we can ask it -- is about the universe of discourse (not the speaker's only, nor the hearer's, but the collaborative and covenentual they Griceanly come to) and the issue then is simply is there such a thing or not.  That is, given a picture of a unicorn (gee, it feels good to get back to home ground), is there a unicorn this is a picture of , sa pvsljrna, or is it a picture which we recognize as of the sort portraying unicorns, but without any claim either that there are unicorns or, more particularly, that this is a particular one?  sa pvsljrna [this]e pxreka  vs. [this]a le fe si smi pvsljrni pxrake (I think I've got that right -- sorry about [this]). 



From: And Rosta <and.rosta@hidden.email>
To: engelang@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Thursday, September 13, 2012 6:03 PM
Subject: Re: [engelang] intensions & extensions (Xorban)

 
Jorge Llambías, On 13/09/2012 23:30:
> On Thu, Sep 13, 2012 at 4:31 PM, And Rosta<and.rosta@hidden.email> wrote:
>>
>> Some preliminary not-deeply-thought-out suggestions:
>>
>> 1. Let s-& r- be extensional, in the sense that in s/ra Ra Pa, Ra and Pa
>> are in the same world.
>> 2. I can't make up my mind about l-; I've been vacillating back and forth
>> between having it be like s- and r- and having it unspecified for
>> extensionality. Again, in the sense that la Ra Pa, Ra and Pa are in the same
>> world. I think I'm inclining towards the unspecified option.
>> 3. Split f- into intensional (world-shifting) and nonintensional versions,
>> say f- and h-. It can be a bit verbose, tho: "la fa la sma pvjrna
>> pxro'ekaka'a" as opposed to the ambiguous (or extensional) "la pvjrna
>> pxro'ekaka'a".
>
> Why do we want this special treatment for f-predicates and not for
> every predicate? Wouldn't it be better to have an n- that fixes a
> predicate to this world? Perhaps "na'a", corresponding to Lojban's
> "ca'a".

Is "this world" the speaker's? I was thinking not about how to tie predications to the speaker's world but rather about how to tie them to the same world as each other or different worlds from each other.

So given Rule (1), how do you talk about making a picture of a unicorn in such a way as to say the unicorn is in the depicted world but not in the world in which the picture is made? And how do you talk about a situation where there is a situation where is a unicorn and I do a picture of the situation? That's not a clear example. Trying again: How do you talk about a situation in which there is an explosion and I photograph it? My thinking is that you'd use f for the former and h for the latter. For both "sa fa X Za" and "sa ha X Za", Za and fa and Za and ha are in the same world, but whereas ha is part of the same spacetime flux as Za, fa is in Za's world a platonic being, not part of the same spacetime as Za.

--And.